Film reviews and more
★★☆☆☆ One era’s genre cinema becomes another generation’s cultural harvest. As the cycle repeats itself, the line between pastiche and revisionism becomes increasingly tenuous and viewers can find themselves becoming lazy purveyors of B-movie nostalgia. For revivalism to work, the film must primarily function on its own terms. It can trade in genre scavenging and meta nods, but the […]
★★☆☆☆ Angelina Jolie has stated that she has given up on acting and is now solely a director. If her sophomore effort Unbroken (2014) – a biopic of Olympian long distance runner and World War II POW Louis Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) – is to be taken as evidence, it might be wise she doesn’t entirely give up on her […]
★★★☆☆ Strap on your sandals and unsheath your swords! Ridley Scott has cinematically traversed ancient Rome with Gladiator (2000) and the crusades with the abysmal Kingdom Of Heaven (2005), now he invites audiences to ancient Egypt, to recount the Old Testament in Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014). As ever, he achieves technical proficiency, but fails to move forward from […]
Welcome to our rundown of the top ten films of 2014. To see the cinematic delights that comprised the rest of our top twenty, check out our first post here. We’d also like to take the time to mention some of the films that narrowly missed out but remain deserving of recognition. Festival favourites Jauja, The Duke of Burgundy, Mommy […]
It’s that time of year where we brace ourselves for what’s to come. Yet before we say au revoir to 2014 the CineVue team has taken the time to cogitate on the cinematic delights of the past twelve months. This year we’ve decided to split the list in two; partly to help promote indie films we’re passionate about, but […]
★★☆☆☆ Not even the promise of sunshine can save the one-note exercise in musical adaptations that is Annie (2014). Helmed by Will Gluck (of Easy A (2010) notoriety), this adaptation of the 1977 Broadway musical delivers on sights and sounds, but sadly, there is little meat on these bones. Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna and Gluck have updated not only […]
★★★★★ A meditative, often gruelling slowburner which explores concepts of ‘home’, Tsai Ming-liang’s remarkable Stray Dogs (2013) seeks to investigate the poor’s right to their own city within a phantasmagorical urban landscape. An immensely bittersweet work, Tsai evokes the poetry and tragedy of life lived on the margins of society. A father and his two children have travelled from […]
★★★★★ There Will be Blood (2007) gave us the birth of American capitalism, The Master (2012) doused us in the uncertainty of post-war malaise and now Inherent Vice (2014) takes us to the crossroads of the modern Californian ethos. This is Paul Thomas Anderson’s American history trilogy – how the West was won, bought and sold. Gore Vidal called […]
★★★★☆ Since as far back as his third feature, 1997’s Ossos, the work of auteur Pedro Costa has frequently explored the troubled Lisbon district of Fontainhas. In a loose trilogy he has chronicled the existential wanderings of impoverished immigrants, most recently in Colossal Youth (2006), which focused on the Cape Verdean Ventura. Costa is once again the subject of […]
★★★☆☆ Respect is a funny old thing. In order to get a little, you also have to give a little. What Sacha Bennett’s sixth full feature, We Still Kill the Old Way (2014), stylishly and cheekily showcases the ramifications of children not seeing their way to respecting their elders. It knows when to have fun and sits easily between gritty […]
★★☆☆☆ Boring, befuddling and slightly out-of-touch are all criticisms that can be aimed squarley atSex Tape (2014). In what is seemingly just a ninety minute product placement for the nifty capabilities of Apple products, this sex comedy falls limp very quickly, despite it being built on the premise of hot-blooded homebodies paying woefully for their dirty deeds. Playing on […]
★★☆☆☆ Nordic noir has been doing brisk trade on both page and screen over the last few years, cannily stimulating an apparently global appetite for a slew of flawed detectives and macabre investigations from the region. Although there have been some successful cinematic outings, it is actually on the small screen that the genre has made its most prominent […]